“Operation Car
Wash”: An Attack by the Police and
Judiciary Threatening Democratic and
Labor RightsBrazil:
No to Impeachment! For Workers
Mobilization Against the Rightist
Bourgeois Offensive
No Political Support to the Bourgeois
Popular Front GovernmentFor the past month, Brazil has been
engulfed in a deep-going political crisis. A
million people marched in right-wing protests
around the country on March 13 demanding
impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff of the
Workers Party. In response, a half million
protested in the streets on March 18 against
impeachment, followed by tens of thousands on
March 24 and 31. Meanwhile, a runaway
corruption investigation threatens basic
democratic rights. At the same time, the
popular front government continues to push
anti-working-class policies in its attempt to
conciliate the aggressive right wing, and the
left is divided between pro- and
anti-government blocs. The Liga
Quarta-Internacionalista do Brasil, calls for
workers mobilization against impeachment and
the bonapartist threat, and at the same time
to use that power against the attacks on
working people by the both the feuding
bourgeois forces. Brazil:
No to Impeachment! For Workers Mobilization
Against the Rightist Bourgeois Offensive, No
Political Support to the Bourgeois Popular
Front Government (April 2016)\

SL/ICL Impeached By
Its Own Past
For the first time in a decade, the
Spartacist League and its
International Communist League have
published an article on Brazil. The
article presents no program for
class struggle in Brazil. Its sole
purpose was to attack the
Internationalist Group and the Liga
Quarta-Internacionalista do Brasil
as supposed “Militant Supporters of
the Popular Front,” and to divert
attention from the SL/U.S.’ recent
expulsion of the
Better-Late-Than-Never Faction of
the ICL, which posed a sharp and
effective challenge to its
zigzagging opportunism. The SL/ICL’s
claim that to oppose the seizure of
power by the den of thieves in the
Brazilian Congress together with a
judicial apparatus working
hand-in-glove with pro-imperialist
reactionaries and increasingly
assertive militarized police forces
you must be for the current
government is pure sophistry. But
the SL has an additional problem:
back in 1998, the latter-day
Spartacist League opposed the
impeachment of Bill Clinton. By the
SL’s current logic, it thereby
supported Clinton and the Democrats.
The IG and LQB oppose impeachment in
Brazil while calling for workers
mobilization against the ominous
judicial/police offensive targeting
the working class, and against the
anti-worker policies of the
popular-front government. SL/ICL
Impeached By Its Own Past (May
2016)

World Capitalist Economic
Crisis Behind the Rightist OffensiveFor
Class Struggle Against the Bonapartist
Threat in BrazilIn the present
acute political crisis shaking Brazil, a
string of explosive revelations, shifting
parliamentary alliances, arbitrary actions
by the repressive apparatus and huge street
mobilizations are presented in the bourgeois
media as a struggle over “corruption.”
The idea that there is a moral “cleansing”
underway among the rulers is an illusion and
a pretext. In reality, there are three main
elements of the crisis: a political struggle
marking the end of the popular-front
government, a blatant attempt by the
judicial and police organs to free
themselves of all civilian control on the
road to an authoritarian regime, and
underlying it all, the consequences of the
world capitalist economic crisis. In Brazil,
the street protests over the last year are
the result of the defeat of the struggles of
the “hot winter” of 2013 and of the
struggles against the World Cup of soccer.
The government and its left satellites have
labeled the offensive against President
Dilma Rousseff a “coup d’état.” In itself,
impeachment does not signify a rupture of
the bourgeois-democratic “order.” But if the
repressive organs gain autonomy to
effectively dominate the government, whether
by a coup or behind the façade of a
“technical” or “transition” government, this
would in fact be a “state of exception,”
inherently anti-democratic even within the
bourgeois framework.For
Class Struggle Against the Bonapartist
Threat in Brazil(April
2016)

The Role of
Imperialism and the Military in the
Brazilian Political CrisisFor 13 years, the
popular-front government in Brazil has
acted as firemen for the IMF in Latin
America and as the sheriff of Yankee
imperialism in the Caribbean, providing
mercenary troops for the occupaiton of
Haiti. In general, Washington doesn’t want
big upheavals in the largest country in
Latin America, but there is no reason to
presume that the would-be masters of the
planet always act with consistency. Judge
Sérgio Moro is working in close
collaboration with U.S. authorities, and
the whole so-called Lava Jato (Car
Wash) investigation is being carried out
in accord with capitalist sectors seeking
to further open the Brazilian oil market
to imperialist penetration. What is taking
place is a employer-media-judiciary-police
movement with at least some support from
imperialism. Even if it does not result in
a classic military coup, it points to an
authoritarian outcome, a strong state
whose job is to impose, with an iron fist,
the budget cuts, reforms and
privatizations demanded by capital, which
the popular-front governments have only
partially implemented. Now they want to go
all the way. The
Role of Imperialism and the Military in
the Brazilian Political Crisis(April 2016)

Brazil’s
Opportunist Left Tailing After the
Bourgeois BlocsFor the last year, Brazil
has been shaken by an acute political
crisis pitting the bourgeois popular-front
government of Dilma Rousseff of the
Workers Party (PT) against the traditional
right-wing opposition which wants to throw
her out of the the presidential palace.
However, the government and opposition
share the same fundamental program, of
resolving the capitalist economic crisis
by attacking the working people, while
they may differ (at times) only over the
rhythm and degree of the attacks. In this
context of a dispute between two bourgeois
forces, the Brazilian left is divided into
two major camps: the pro-PT camp, which
chants “não vai ter golpe” (no to a
coup d’état), and the anti-PT camp which
chants “throw them all out.” In reality,
both pro- and anti-PT camps are appendages
of the conflicting capitalist forces. Now
with the addition of escalating arbitrary
judicial and police actions, what’s needed
is not an illusory “third camp” on the
terrain of bourgeois democracy but a
working-class opposition with a program of
revolutionary struggle against the entire
ruling class and against the danger of an
authoritarian outcome. Brazil’s
Opportunist Left Tailing After the
Bourgeois Blocs
(April 2016)